THE SCENT AND SIGHTS OF SUMMER

Just now, in spite of little to no rain historic heat, the crape myrtles and the purple phlox are blooming and their scent is blown around by light breezes.  Since my standards for outside plants are: tough, beautiful, and fragrant if possible, these meet the test.  And, like most plants which are tough, they do tend to take over.  The purple phlox would gladly fill a very large bed, and very nearly do so right now.  The crape myrtles, particularly the white Natchez, grow very vigorously, bloom very vigorously, and cast their spent blooms very vigorously.  That is no problem for our crapes, but our next door neighbor has beautiful ones too, which grow next to our shared fence, and which just about cover the area where my garden work bench is, both the bench and the walkway in front of it, and everything in the surrounds.  Yet how can I complain when I love them so.

In addition to these lovelies, which more or less save the season, there are zinnias blooming everywhere, including the garden paths, all with my encouragement.  The zinnias have no noticeable scent, but the butterflies love them, enough said.  

Among my many other plant enthusiasms are bulbs.  Not all bulbs, just the ones which are tough and beautiful.  Each wave of spring bulb dazzles me in turn, from grape hyacinths and daffodils and hyacinths to bluebells and all the rest, and then the fall bulbs of sternbergia and August lilies (lycoris squamigera), ah, but then there are the spider lilies. Spider lilies are tough and beautiful but not fragrant like so many other bulbs.  But there is something so exotic about the spider lilies (lycoris radiata) that they grab me every late summer/early fall when they bloom.  

That something that looks so dramatic and delicate is actually really very tough, at least in this part of the country, is so amazing.  And they grow more and more blooms each year that they are left alone.  Because they do not like to be moved.  So the first year they are planted, blooms are forget-about-it.  But after that they flourish.  I've seen areas where they bloom in lawns and multiply gloriously.  But mine are in beds, safe from lawnmowers and being walked upon and every year they dazzle.  A good dazzle is good for everyone.

Then there are the bunnies

We live in an urban neighborhood, not very far from a major freeway.  And yet we have all sorts of critters that seem to find our backyard.  This last spring and summer, we had a small rabbit, who our son named 'Benny', although we were way too shy to ask if it was a girl bunny or a boy bunny.  The bunny became accustomed to our comings and goings in the garden as long as we didn't get too close.  We have this very large quince, which was supposed to be a 'dwarf', but which has become known as the quince that took over the flower bed.  We eventually had to extend the bed area several feet to accommodate the lovely thing, which is glorious in the spring and sometimes reblooms during the fall equinox as well.  Anyway we noted that Benny seemed to find the quince a sanctuary to dart into if humans got too close.  That was the way it was at first.  Then we noticed that Benny spent quite a lot of time under the quince, because Benny was spotted coming out of the quince shelter often.

Since our precious Max cat passed last year, there is no one to threaten a bunny in our garden.  However, we found that Benny apparently could threaten some of the plants, especially a begonia I had transplanted into a flowerbed across from our breakfast table window.  Still, what were we to do?  Benny mostly ate grass when we were watching, so we just let well enough alone.  Then a month or so ago, one of us spotted a bigger bunny, with longer ears.  We don't know if this is Benny, transformed by growth (Benny had shorter ears at first acquaintance), or a stranger.

And then, today, I walked out into the garden room to check the morning world, and there was a really small bunny making its way across the patio in dainty small steps.  Suddenly a squirrel came down from the tree there.  The tiny bunny froze.  The squirrel moved on down the tree in what I would describe as a threatening manner.  The tiny bunny flashed away across the garden so quickly it was amazing.  Then the rascally squirrel turned and climbed back up the tree.  It was one of those moments we treasure, seeing a bit of the natural world we can forget in our world of freeways and cell phones and all that.